


anything can happen before the sunrise

by deino (aseaofsound)



Series: the universe and us [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Sun & Moon | Pokemon Sun & Moon Versions
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Growing Up, Slice of Life, and learn how to be dumb teenagers, they bond thru loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-02 23:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13328379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aseaofsound/pseuds/deino
Summary: Moon is all soft whispers, stolen glances, subtle smiles. It’s a good thing Gladion is perceptive.—Moon teaches him a lot of things on her visits to Aether Paradise, but the most intriguing is the promise of tomorrow, that endings are not inevitable.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Like most of my fics, I wanted this to be a single, long one shot, but I knew it would never get posted if I waited until I was done, so I separated the segments by chapter (even though I would have preferred it to be a one shot sighs)
> 
> title taken from the song "Sunrise" from In the Heights
> 
> 2/12/18 - on hiatus/complete until further notice

_turn 1 : trick room_

* * *

 

She comes during his lunch break, having figured out his schedule without being there. It is disconcerting at first, but he eventually succumbs to her presence and his creeping loneliness, a thorn in his side that he continually tries to ignore to little avail. After having spent so much time alone during his formative years, one would think it’d get easier, but it didn’t, not to mention his short-lived reunion with his estranged-and-then-not-and-then-estranged sister. Humans are socially dependent, a trait he laments time and again, along with the feeling that his pokémon companions are not enough.

(He loves them, and they love him, but he needs a reply, some _reciprocity_ once in awhile.)

He deigns that Moon feels the same; otherwise, she might not have come to Aether Paradise in the first place.

It’s the beginning of the summer season the first time he sees her, and Aether Paradise is quiet in the opening hour, the only sound in the conservatory that of the artificial ecosystem. A few employees mill about, writing things down on clipboards, a handful of brave ones greeting him. The senior administration is rather distant, the relationship akin to politicians and their governed people. But Gladion appreciates the sentiment all the same, nodding at the ones who maintain eye contact with him for more than two seconds as he wanders the area, the white noise comforting.

He frowns when he finds someone in a restricted zone, one that’s uninhabited and under construction. She’s clutching that old fruit bag, the seams having come loose in so many places he wonders how it’s still functional.

“How’d you get in here?” he asks, more curious than he is annoyed.

She holds her trainer’s passport up to him, the Champion’s insignia stamped in the laminated pages.

“Opportunistic, are we?”

“I’m not,” she says, and her eyes widen like he accused her of something much more heinous. It occurs to him how uncynical, how untarnished by misfortune she is, yet he’s grown too much to be jealous. Maybe in another life, one he lived many years prior, he would have envied her that. “It just happened.”

He nods, finding nothing else to say after that, and makes a mental note to have Wicke go over protocol with the employees again.

They stand there for some time, staring at the deserted construction scene. Gladion had always found them eerie, machines left in odd, barren places like a wasteland, with no one present to man them and give them purpose. A movie or television production on pause, life stilled momentarily. On hiatus. If he could, he’d rather stay and observe in silence with the girl—woman, now, because time stands still for no one—beside him. But it is living beings that give these things purpose, give the land purpose, and he wonders if he could be reborn into a wall next time, if there is a next time.

“I’ve got something to attend to,” he says, somewhat reluctantly, as tourists begin filing into the conservatory.

She remains, even as the machines roar to life, dirt and dust clouding the room as he walks out.


	2. Chapter 2

_ turn 2 : waterfall _

* * *

 

The next time he sees her, he’s walking out of the Battle Royal Dome, having let off some steam in his dour mood, brought on by nothing but his mercurial brain chemistry. But it also might have something to do with the weather forecast. 

A pair of children, two tanned little boys with gaps in their teeth and bright eyes, gawk at him as he passes by, starstruck. Gladion can’t bring himself to smile under the purple clouds in the sky, prophetic bruises that tell him a storm is coming, though this he already knows. Rain clouds and the way the trees submit to the harsh winds remind him of his family, of what it used to be, of his parents dancing to classical music and their adult laughter that children can never understand and of Lillie urging him to splash in puddles and soak their clothes because even though Mother would be annoyed, she wouldn’t get mad, not like she did after Father disappeared. But Gladion, not being a wishful thinker, would rather be caught in a monsoon than think about what his family could’ve been, what  _ he  _ could have been, if their lives had never gone off-course. There is nothing to be done about that now as he shoulders his mother’s legacy without her. 

A voice calling his name snaps him away from his thoughts, and he glances up through his rain-soaked hair to find an equally soaked Moon sitting by the fountain. She smiles, easily, as she walks toward him, cradling a paper bag. 

“Hi,” she calls, her usually muted voice audible over the rain. 

“Shouldn’t you be inside?” he asks, even though he planned to wander for a bit under the gloomy weather himself.

She holds up the bag, dark and peeling now that the rain soaked through. The Slurpuff mascot’s grin turns into a grimace as the bag sags pitifully.

“Really? In this weather?” 

By now, they’re the only two around, the general population having retreated inside. Moon nods, still smiling, but her eyes don’t crinkle like they usually do. 

“It’s Hau’s birthday,” she explains, and her smile is laced with something that might be sadness. Gladion watches as raindrops race down her face, catching on her eyelashes before descending. A phantom trail of tears. “He’s been busy. We haven’t spoken in…” she trails off, uncertain.

He hasn’t thought of Hau in what feels like forever, not since the other boy left to find his father. What were they good for, anyway, except leaving? But Gladion shakes the thought away. Mohn never left, not willingly, at least, but he is gone now and he knew the risks, had to have known the risks of encountering the Ultra Wormholes if the papers he left are anything to go by, and maybe Gladion has a right to be bitter. There’s not a trace of the man left other than his research and his children, but even now, Gladion remembers little except his smile and warmth. Lillie, perhaps, does not remember anything at all.

“Gladion?”

He looks down into Moon’s face, her curious gray eyes. The harsh winds blow his hair this way and that, and raindrops spear his face like tiny knives. 

“We should go inside,” he says, because someone has to be the sane one out of the two of them, and it isn’t going to be Moon, who goes out in the middle of a rainstorm for the sake of dessert and a silly tradition, never mind his affinity for wallowing in self-pity and mud-soaked trainers. 

She nods, bobbing her head of drenched hair and falling into step beside him. He slows down, matching her gait and short legs, and holds the door to the malasada shop open for her despite his distaste for the treat. Moon smiles up at him in thanks, her nose and eyes tinged red, when he buys her a fresh batch.


	3. Chapter 3

_ turn 3 : simple beam _

* * *

 

“Do you like being president?” 

She asks him this question on a sunny day in August. 

He spotted her easily against the stark white of the Paradise, standing against the rails at the main entrance, and she trapped him easily with her blank look and lonely smile. 

The heat blares down on them like the smog in a city on the mainland, where people’s lives move in fast forward, where they stop for nothing but themselves. This, of course, is not from personal experience, Gladion having never left Aether Paradise or the region of Alola, but from the experiences of others, those more worldly yet not much older than him. 

“It’s not bad,” is all he can bring himself to say, because it isn’t, not really. In the beginning it was difficult, as one might expect running a company as a child would be, but Wicke guided him through it. Most of the foundation workers were kept in the dark about the president’s ulterior motives, anyway, so not many adjustments to policy were needed. The scientists, on the other hand, were trickier, but Gladion has never been the type to forgive. 

She nods, leaning forward over the railing she’s perched upon, and he’s surprised when she doesn’t fall right into the ocean. However, he knows Moon for her composure, if nothing else.

“Do you like being Champion?” he asks.

She shrugs noncommittally. This is news to him. “It’s lonely. I don’t really get challengers. Maybe one a year,” she says to her folded hands, secretive, as her fingers fidget and nails dig into skin. A smile graces her lips, but there is no happiness there. “I don’t think I was ready.”

“No one ever is, not that it matters.”

Her gaze bores into his profile as he stares out to sea, searching for anything that can be salvaged from a lost childhood. But the waves simply overlap one another, crashing and folding and crashing again, leaving nothing in their wake, no answers, no opportunities. Such is the life of gifted—or, in Gladion’s case, fortunate—children, because who else would become the president of a foundation at the tender age of thirteen?

Children grow like bug pokémon in Alola, they say—and maybe that means painfully and in the blink of an eye. Why should he and Moon be any more exceptional?

“I like being Champion,” she says quietly, almost inaudible over the roar of the ocean. “But the world’s bigger than Mount Lanakila.”

The words reach his ears slowly. There is something soft about Moon, something innocent and hopeful in spite of everything—something worth holding onto. If only for her sake he nods, earning him a smile from her, which he pockets as well as his hands. A promise.


	4. Chapter 4

_ turn 4 : confusion _

* * *

 

They are in his office when she kisses him for the first time.

He’s sitting when it happens, because he doubts she could reach him on her tiptoes. Not to say that he expected her to mash their lips together like he's seen young people do, so unabashed in their love for one another and wanting the world to know it, too, but the sitting makes it less awkward, somehow. Sunlight filters in from the high windows behind his desk, her form illuminated as he squints. It’s quick, lasting a little longer than a blink before she pulls away, but she remains close and he can smell the ocean on her skin. She must’ve taken the ferry over instead of flying, he thinks absently, breathing her in.

“There,” she says, grinning. She has dimples. 

He rolls his eyes, feeling red in the face. Gladion doesn’t get how she can be so nonchalant about this, even if it is something  _ normal _ teenagers do. “Should I thank you?”

She shrugs, tracing the woodgrain of his desk with a pinky. “If you want.”

A beep echoes from his computer, and he’s thankful for the distraction as he hurriedly answers an email, unsure of what to say to her. He enjoys her company and he won’t deny it; she’s kind, trustworthy, quiet. And cute, admittedly. But he just doesn’t understand relationships, not like she does, and if this kiss means anything more to her than it does to him, he wouldn’t guess so, not from the way she avoids his gaze and acts like nothing happened. And besides, aren’t first kisses a big deal among young people?

Her gaze is trained on the polished surface, and he can’t see her face from where he sits. “I used to think it’d be Lillie.”

He stops typing at that, looking wide-eyed at the mistake he made, before hastily pressing the delete key. 

She continues, “But then she never came back.” An almost imperceptible sigh. His skin prickles.

He hits send and leans back in his chair. She’s looking at him expectantly, head cocked slightly, and it occurs to him she’s no more of an expert on this than he.


	5. Chapter 5

_ turn 5 : destiny bond _

* * *

 

“So tell me something.”

Moon lifts her head and her hands still. The growlithe in her lap pats her hand with a paw, and whines for her to continue brushing its tail.

“Hm?”

Gladion slides down beside her and leans forward on his knees. “You liked my sister?”

“Yes,” she says, and he’s almost surprised by her utter lack of hesitation, her honesty. She stares back at him, face blank as usual, before she turns her attention back to the pokémon.

He nods, unsure of where to go from there, of why he even asked. “What is that like, anyway?” he says, even if he has an inkling of what it’s like.

The growlithe jumps out of her arms, running to meet the rest of his pack as they feed. Moon rests her chin on her folded arms. 

“If she asked me to jump off a bridge, I would,” she says simply, as though she were stating a fact. A cryptic smile tugs at her lips, and Gladion has to pull his gaze away to watch the pokémon frolicking in the conservatory, heat rushing toward his face. If Moon notices, she says nothing, continuing to smile in that peculiar way of hers.

But if there’s anything Gladion has learned in his short life, it would be that to love means to sacrifice. His mother made sacrifices when they lost their father, and he and Lillie were caught in the crossfire. Gladion made sacrifices, too, when he left Aether for the first time, and his chest aches with guilt even after all these years, even if Lillie doesn’t need him anymore. Lillie, now capable of making her own choices, chose to sacrifice her new life here in Alola for the sake of their mother. Love is cyclical, a wheel that turns perpetually, powered by people like Lillie, like Lusamine, and perhaps like him, as well. 

Gladion replies, “I think I know a little of what you mean.”


	6. Chapter 6

_ turn 6 : helping hand _

* * *

 

From outside the Trainer’s School he can hear the telltale sounds of battling, the crashes and the calls of trainers and pokémon alike. Moon is in there, but she herself is indistinguishable amongst the voices with that unassuming nature of hers, her passion a small, steady flame instead of a blazing inferno. 

Gladion sighs, seating himself on the overgrown roots of a tree after having all but annihilated the teams of local trainers. Moon insisted he accompany her on her Champion responsibility, which apparently includes making guest appearances in random places, yet he’s been relegated to nothing more than babysitting duty. 

Silvally and its brethren circle one another in the field, as if sizing each other up. They are synthetic, given life simply because humans wished to do so, and are more intelligent than most pokémon you’d find in the wild. But that also means they’re more susceptible to irreparable injury, so Gladion keeps a close eye on the two just in case.

The one he’d given Moon as a Type: Null is smaller than his own, though the physical differences between them are negligible at best—Aether is nothing if not precise. The memories they currently hold are what set them apart—his partner’s membranes are a verdant green to combat Moon’s ace, a devastatingly powerful primarina, while those of her Silvally are at their natural translucent.

Gladion leans against the tree behind him, observing their behavior. Moon’s Silvally is generally less expressive than his own, who clucks its beak and backs away in disinterest. It settles down beside him, nudging his shoulder lightly with its muzzle. Gladion scratches its neck, but is startled by a nudge on his other shoulder. Moon’s Silvally stares back at him, head cocked slightly. Gladion blinks, before letting out a soft chuckle.

He gives Moon’s Silvally a gentle rub under its muzzle, earning him a soft rumble from deep within its chest.


	7. Chapter 7

_ turn 7 : echoed voice _

* * *

 

Moon is called on official Champion duty in November, meaning she’ll be away for two months at the least. Gladion was not briefed on the specifics of the job, nor did he ask. She never mentioned much of anything, taciturn as she is, and one day she was here and the next, not.

Her absence feels more pronounced than it should. On a day with particularly nice weather and less responsibilities than usual, Gladion suddenly regrets all the time he’s spent with her. What did he even do in his free time anymore? Most of it was spent with Moon, and before Moon, there was no such thing as free time, only the time between training and enforcing and becoming  _ strong _ . 

Two weeks into Moon’s business trip, Gladion calls her, the impulse strong and pounding in his mind like blood, inevitable and hard to ignore. 

The line rings and rings while Gladion clenches and unclenches his fists. He has never particularly enjoyed phone calls, and his aversion to them grows with each passing ring that Moon doesn’t answer. She’s busy, this he knows well, but he has never handled impulses well, and is more emotionally driven than he’d like to admit.

He lowers his phone in defeat when he hears a soft “hello?” from the receiver, and his fingers fumble as he holds it to his ear.

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hi.”

The line goes silent. 

“What are you up to?” he asks, cringing.

“A conference.”

Blood fills his cheeks, making the room feel much warmer than it actually is. “I should go, then.”

“I left. It was boring.”

It’s quiet again. He watches as the numbers change on the clock on his desk.

“You’d like it here,” she continues. Her voice is louder and clearer than he has ever heard it, and he finds it almost comical how ungainly telephones make people sound.

“Where?”

“Sinnoh.”

His heart thuds against his chest as a not wholly unpleasant flush spreads over him. “Why’s that?”

“It’s cold, but pretty.” A beat passes by comfortably, and then she says, “Like you.”

He rolls his eyes, more embarrassed than annoyed; he’s not sure if he’ll ever get used to her blunt way with words. 

“Shut up.”

She laughs in three syllables, the sound close but scratchy with the miles stretched between them, and he wonders what it’d sound like if she were right beside him, what it would feel like to have her breath in his ear and her smile pressed against his skin.


	8. Chapter 8

_ turn 8 : present _

* * *

 

Moon returns from Sinnoh with a bag full of foreign goods, ones he isn’t quite sure how she managed to smuggle through on her trip back (Champion loopholes?). Her Rotom chatters incessantly about some mansion in the middle of a forest, though Moon pays it no mind as she shoves cakes and candy and even a garish t-shirt depicting a lighthouse, announcing  _ Sunyshore City _ , toward Gladion. 

He samples every single gift she brings back, even though they both know of his distaste for anything sweet, and even models the t-shirt for her as she wonders about the size.

(It’s a little too loose and a little too short, as everything tends to be on him, but he tells her it’s fine, anyway, and the smile and the laugh she gives him are all he needs.)


	9. Chapter 9

_turn 9 : memento_

* * *

 

Melemele Island is quiet, for the most part, and a pleasant breeze blows through every nook and cranny.

All of a sudden there’s pressure on his right hand, a grip on his fingers as she grasps his hand lightly in hers, both of theirs rough and calloused. He looks at her in askance, but she only hums a tune, one she probably made up just now, and keeps her eyes trained forward. They walk through Route 2 as she swings their hands between them, like he often sees parents do with their children. He never got to know what that feels like, his upbringing lacking for the most part in physical affection, but he supposes it must feel like this, his hand in Moon’s swinging like nothing else matters.

“What are you thinking about?” she asks, smiling up at him. When he reaches up to brush his bangs out of his face, he realizes he’s smiling, too.

“Nothing,” he says softly, and for once, it’s true.

A group of children zoom past, calling to each other, their laughter blending with the coos of pikipek and trumbeak. They pass by a modest home with a swing set in the yard, a shock of white hair and a voice he’d recognize anywhere making Gladion stop in his tracks.

“Yeah, I know, Plums, ya don’t hafta yell—”

Guzma clams up at the sight of them, slack-jawed, and he nearly drops his phone on the ground. Then a smile creeps onto his face, one that looks more sinister than welcoming, though there is no malicious glint in his eye.

“Yo, you would _never believe_ —”

And then Gladion is running, face burning and his hand clasped tightly in Moon’s. Down the hill, the house and the motel beside it disappear and Hau`oli comes into view, city lights blinking like stars in the setting sun. His chest feels light in spite of the effort of running, and a laugh bubbles up from his throat as he slows to a stop.

“Gladion!” Moon cries, squeezing his hand hard. She’s stronger than she looks.

“Sorry,” he says, though his expression says otherwise.

She shakes her head and pinches his arm, before her lips on his cheek send him reeling.


End file.
